No, this is NOT about the Pitch Black flick that could have been REALLY Scary but not so much, but rather about black solar cells and the potential of said tech regarding cloudy days and high energy efficiency quotients.

250,000,000 years later, circa the 21st century, an ongoing 6th extinction is happening before our very eyes but this time, it's happening 1000 times faster than the original, a notion disquieting to say the least.

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, has ethics and finance in mind when talking about the TPP, the larcenous gambit of big corporations gaming the system at the expense of nations, a trade agreement Obama is pushing to the max while ignoring the national interest of America.

Perhaps the most invidious - and most dishonest - part of such agreements concerns investor protection. Of course, investors have to be protected against the risk that rogue governments will seize their property. But that is not what these provisions are about. There have been very few expropriations in recent decades, and investors who want to protect themselves can buy insurance from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, a World Bank affiliate (the US and other governments provide similar insurance). Nonetheless, the US is demanding such provisions in the TPP, even though many of its "partners" have property protections and judicial systems that are as good as its own.The real intent of these provisions is to impede health, environmental, safety, and, yes, even financial regulations meant to protect America's own economy and citizens. Companies can sue governments for full compensation for any reduction in their future expected profits resulting from regulatory changes.This is not just a theoretical possibility. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia for requiring warning labels on cigarettes. Admittedly, both countries went a little further than the US, mandating the inclusion of graphic images showing the consequences of cigarette smoking.The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits.In the future, if we discover that some other product causes health problems (think of asbestos), rather than facing lawsuits for the costs imposed on us, the manufacturer could sue governments for restraining them from killing more people. The same thing could happen if our governments impose more stringent regulations to protect us from the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions.

Channeling 1984gives a detailed look into why the TPP is a disaster in the making.

Experts Exchange's infographicis telling in terms of just how fast systems have become and we haven't even discussed the Quantum Computer, hardware that will change everything regarding tech and the ability to crunch numbers. :)

V for Vendetta, an intense film dealing with violence, vengeance, government malfeasance and public acquiescence, appears prescient in regards to the UK proposing some rather interesting laws designed to fight terrorism wherever it lurks.

Seymour M. Hersh is a reporter with incredible contacts to black ops, high end military and senior government officials willing to talk to someone who gets it right before posting it for the world to see so when Hersh says something, it matters, with the latest dealing with The Killing of Bin Laden.

On the cosmic scheme of things, deflategate doesn't amount to a hill of beans in terms of impacting world peace, ameliorating global warming or eliminating rampant congressional corruption but what is does do is show how shoddy and weak the report was in condemning Brady of "possibly" being aware of what was going on regarding the deflation of footballs that did not impact the wax job the Pats did to the Colts in the AFC title game.

Summing it up, is there undeniable guilt here? Would this Deflategate report finding stand in a court of law? I think not and, for the money Wells got for something that took three months to finish, wouldn't you think this document would be more definitive in determining quilt rather than depending on hearsay, innuendo and the "more probable than not" weasel words that permeate the entire document along with a lack of scientific rigor to truly determine that the Pat's balls were indeed truly deflated when some of the Colt's balls proved to be also, something just not kosher when penalizing a player and team on evidence as flimsy as this.

The last question to ask it, would Pete Rozelle, the former head of the NFL, pull the trigger on this? For some reason, I rather doubt it.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Mimicking nature via neural nets has become the prime driver for enabling AI to work in similar fashion to how the brain processes information, something able to be simulated in code without issue but not in practical fashion in hardware, until now.

The image above show how neural nets work, the part that get interesting is how Google, Facebook, IBM, among significant others, are mining enormous amounts of data from the net to train NNs to become smarter, a thought that makes yours truly quietly uneasy as it does Musk, Hawking, Rees and Joy, guys that know a little bit about tech, science and the potent unknowns that AI brings to the table.

BRT has waxed poetic about the problems of infrastructure and why it's so important to the wellbeing of the country for infrastructure to be ongoing and not left for dead, something that's becoming a national scandal/crisis as we watch an inept congress vote for never ending war at the expense of this once great nation. With this rant in mind, there is at least one exception to the rule, the 59th Street bridge in Manhattan, a favorite of yours truly as the bridge is a wonder of mechanical engineering writ large as seen by the pictures taken last year during travels on the East Side in Oct of '14. If only other bridges were treated with as much respect and affection as this one is something often thought of every time I see these images of tech done right to the max. Enjoy.

Saturday, May 09, 2015

Elon Musk is a player. Visionary, relentless and prescient, he get it and it's not the cars he builds, it's the upcoming Powerwall, a device that, in time, will change everything regarding clean power and its relationship with fossil fuels and the utilities.

Without question, the infrastructure's not there yet as thin film solar's still in the lab and the transition to graphene supercapacitors is still in it's infancy but the end is coming for fossil fuel whether big oil and coal producers like it or not, and it's about time.

Thursday, May 07, 2015

To yours truly, Red Auerbach was the best basketball coach in history as he not only coached but also was the general manager who had to wheel and deal to get the players he wanted for the Celtics. Guile, loyalty to players and innovation to the max regarding how basketball should be played was Auerbach's genius, something I see reflected in how Geno Auriemma's CT women's team plays, fast, selfless and above all else, ruthlessly efficient ball.

His take on Woodstock's spot on because yours truly was there, along with 400.000+ other stoners and nary a problem ever arose in 4 days where weather conditions were simply horrendous to say the least. Imagine the carnage if booze was part of the equation. Legalizing pot makes eminent sense as the cops, courts and prison guards could deal with people who should be locked up and not us rubes smoking a doobie on our own time.

What's really disconcerting is the fact GW's just starting to ramp up. Something to consider when it comes to climate conditions on this planet that's conducive to our continued survival on this planet.

Sunday, May 03, 2015

Sounds like the US doesn't it save that infrastructure woes are national, the cops militarized, the suburbs crapping out, good jobs disappearing/shipped overseas and public schools declining while at the same time, the military, industrial & congressional complex continues neverending war and unjust taxation policies to the detriment of this once great nation known as America.

Saturday, May 02, 2015

Quanta Magazine, a new, online pub, delves into science in ways lay people like myself can understand. Well written, well researched and above all else, current, this looks like a keeper big time. Interactive, What is Space? is the topic of this post and the graphic seen above is but a small part of an amazing sequence showing how entanglement may give rise to space, something BRT has discussed in part but not in such a beautiful and elegant way like Quanta's